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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24192466">Snape and the Boggart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellynne/pseuds/Ellynne'>Ellynne</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:54:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,617</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24192466</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellynne/pseuds/Ellynne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lupin wants to have his third years face the boggart, Snape considers his history with Lupin and with the Longbottoms.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Snape and the Boggart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I don’t know why I bothered.<br/><br/>I know Neville Longbottom. I’ve taught him for three years and, before he came here . . . . But you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Lupin? What my “friends” did to the boy. And his parents.<br/><br/>My friends. And your friends, too?<br/><br/>Oh, but I forget. You’re the <em>kind</em> one, aren’t you? Still the perfect little prefect, aren’t you? Just waiting for a chance to show those Gryffindors what a compassionate, caring, perfect, bloodthirsty monster you are, weren’t you? And then I had to try to ruin your fun, didn’t I?<br/><br/>There were things I could have done, eleven years ago. Bellatrix was always too cocky and flamboyant, a great deal like her cousin Black. It’s no wonder those two never got along. There’s only room for one in the spotlight. No, Bella was too busy making her speech about why I should join them to have seen it coming if I had decided to stop her.<br/><br/>That would have still left her husband and that idiot brother of his. They would have seen me for what I am then, a liability. Of course, once they’d disposed of me, they probably wouldn’t have gone after the Longbottoms. Bella was the driving force behind that. Or they wouldn’t have until everyone had forgotten about the death of an obscure school teacher with a questionable past. And how many days would that be?<br/><br/>I made my excuses. I could see the risks and I told them so. They wouldn’t get away with it. People had begun to relax, to stop looking for Death Eaters in every shadow. But, let a popular family like the Longbottoms be attacked, and things would change—and we no longer had a Dark Lord and his legions to back us.<br/><br/>They always thought of me as the coward, too spineless to ever face an enemy from the front when I could attack from the rear. And they were right. But they didn’t know they were the enemy.<br/><br/>That’s one thing we have in common, isn’t it Lupin? You never attack people face on, not if you can help it. And all those people you pretend are your friends, they learn just a little too late what you really are.<br/><br/>That’s what you planned for Neville Longbottom, after all. Humiliate the boy, give away all his secrets, and then earn yourself points for all the worthless caring and compassion you would throw on him in front of his friends.<br/><br/>I didn’t stop the LeStranges. I waited. I took the slow, safe road. Oh, help arrived because of me. But, as I’m sure you’d remind me, we were a little too late. The Longbottoms had already been taken and, by the time we tracked them down, there was very little to save. A two year old boy, that’s what we salvaged, the other child who was almost “the boy who lived.” A two year old boy who had seen too much. <br/><br/>I don’t mean just what had happened to his parents or what was done to him. The LeStranges weren’t expecting be attacked, or maybe Bellatrix was simply enjoying herself too much. They never saw us coming and, for once, the Order had the advantage of numbers. They never knew what hit them. Or who.<br/><br/>I had told myself I was prepared. When they saw me, they would know who had sold them out. They knew how to defend their minds. There would be no convenient altering of memories to make them forget. The LeStranges would rot in Azkaban but not before they had the chance to share that knowledge with some of our mutual friends. I would have spent the past eleven years hiding behind Dumbledore at Hogwarts. Or, more likely, I would be dead. <br/><br/>I knew this. I told myself I accepted it. We had all said we accepted the risks when we joined the Order, and I had no intention of following in Black’s footsteps, saying I would make sacrifices only to sell out the people depending on me to save my own skin.<br/><br/>Look how that worked for him. <br/><br/>That’s a way in which you and I differ, Lupin. I can find my own damnation. I don’t need to drag others down as company for the trip.<br/><br/>Or that’s what I told myself.<br/><br/>Until I saw a way out.<br/><br/>A two year old boy. His parents were past caring. He was the only one who knew.<br/><br/>Oh, you would have been proud of me, Lupin. What I said, what I did, it was just what you would have done. <br/><br/>Bellatrix had tortured the boy, trying to make the parents tell her what they knew. Or what she thought they knew. And he’d seen everything she’d done to them. It was a <em>mercy</em> to make him forget. It was <em>kindness</em> to erase this from his mind.<br/><br/>And, incidentally, leave myself safe and clear.<br/><br/>The price was cheap. It only cost the mind and memory of a two year old boy.<br/><br/>He stumbles through life like any other victim of a strong memory charm, forgetful, absent minded. <br/><br/>His parents had genius and, like any other parents, were sure they’d seen signs of it in their child as well. But, they may have been right. It’s hard to believe the son of Frank and Alice Longbottom could be anything else.<br/><br/>Now, he’s not. That’s what my life cost, everything that this boy might have been, everything that this other child of prophecy could have become. <br/><br/>Forgotten that, had you? Harry Potter may not have been the only one who could have defeated the Dark Lord. If the Dark Lord had chosen to attack Neville instead, who’s to say the Potters wouldn’t be a forgotten footnote in this war, living peacefully to this day in Godric’s Hollow? And Neville Longbottom would be The Boy Who Lived.<br/><br/>But he has his pride. The one thing from his parents he kept. He would never beg for mercy. He doesn’t ask for pity. He has never told anyone what happened to him and to his parents.<br/><br/>Ironic, isn’t it? After I helped destroy his mind to protect those secrets, and he has never told anyone the little he knows.<br/><br/>And you would have taken that away from him. For what? To give yourself a few moments of glory in front of a handful of thirteen year olds who won’t even remember your name in a few years. <br/><br/>And I tried to stop you. Oh, no direct attack. With Longbottom, I hardly needed to. His potion was a disaster. As always. <br/><br/>I wonder if anything I say gets through that mind of his. What do I have to do to make him understand?<br/><br/>What do I have to do to make him remember?<br/><br/>Not that it mattered this time. The solution was simple enough. Even Longbottom wouldn’t be able to turn a Shrinking Solution into poison. If we fed it to his toad, it would be sick but nothing more. Not that even the ever studious Miss Granger realized that. I could send him all the way down to Hagrid’s to have his pet tended. By the time he was back, your lesson would be over.<br/><br/>But I made one tactical mistake. I told him I intended to do this. A frontal assault, of sorts. But it seemed necessary. There was always a small chance he might get it right after I’d told him where he was going wrong, but not when he was so afraid for his pet.<br/><br/>Fear for others. Yes, it can be a weakness. But, at times, a useful one.<br/><br/>The mistake was Miss Granger. There are always friends of a sort for people willing to buy them. She buys them with that incredible intellect of hers. I think she’s still young enough to think what she gets in return is real. Stupid girl. See how long Mr. Weasley speaks to her if she ever stops giving him her notes to read over. But she still believes in them and, even after I’d warned her, she did the work for Longbottom.<br/><br/>I decided to warn you. Why not? That great, bleeding heart you pretend to have. Perhaps, just once, you’d put it to use. Or perhaps you’d worry that your dear students would realize you’d been warned and see you for what you are.<br/><br/>I went, I waited, and I told you. “Possibly no one’s warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear.”<br/><br/>It was obvious enough to you what I’d said. You knew his parents, you claimed to be their friend, and the Gryffindors would still be chaffing too much under the points Miss Granger’s “helpfulness” had cost them to hear anything but that reminder.<br/><br/>You had him face it anyway.<br/><br/>It wasn’t quite what we expected, was it?<br/><br/>His worst fear is . . . me.<br/><br/>So. Somewhere in there, he remembers after all.<br/><br/>And what did you have him do to me, Lupin?<br/><br/>Were you just enjoying yourself, or was there more to it? <br/><br/>You had a thirteen year old boy murder me. By proxy, but I wonder . . . . Everyone who saw it enjoyed it immensely.<br/><br/>Did it upset you, missing your chance at me all those years ago? A few seconds more, and you would have had me.<br/><br/>You have to enjoy the Cruciatus Curse to do it properly. It isn’t necessary with murder. But it helps, doesn’t it?<br/><br/>And you taught Neville Longbottom to enjoy killing me, didn’t you?<br/><br/>Yes, Lupin, a very educational lesson. For us all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Snape's opinions of Lupin are not necessarily my opinions of Lupin. He thinks much worse of him than I do.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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